I don't think the USA us asking to much, we certainly didn't say we won't defend our European partners. All we asked is that some of the largest economies in the world hold up there end of NATO and spend 2% of there GDP on military. Joint defense only works when everyone pays there way, a lot of the Euro Nato members are letting there military take a back seat when it comes to funding, Germany is the golden example of that, 4th or 5th largest economy can't even muster a modern military, the only aircraft capable of defending German air space right now are American F-16's.

It is frankly a stupid decision for Germany to acquire more Typhoons when most of their (current) Typhoons are not suitable for operational/combat duties (due to significant logistical/maintenance issues). But I guess Germany could increase the number of operational/combat ready Typhoons to a grand total of 8 aircraft (yay!!!! ) if Germany acquires more Typhoons

mk82 wrote:It is frankly a stupid decision for Germany to acquire more Typhoons when most of their (current) Typhoons are not suitable for operational/combat duties (due to significant logistical/maintenance issues). But I guess Germany could increase the number of operational/combat ready Typhoons to a grand total of 8 aircraft (yay!!!! ) if Germany acquires more Typhoons

Other Typhoon operators don't experience such abysmal readiness rates, so what's the issue in Germany? I agree 100% ordering more Typhoons is ridiculous, especially in light of this information...

There are obviously huge problems in Bundeswehr due to idiotic "cost savings" in the past, but those hit-pieces are indeed little better than Pierre Sprey nonsense. I'm sure these headlines are at least partially created, to sell additional defence spending the public, as it has been woefully inadequate for at least a decade.

The "only 4 Eurofighters" issue came from the decision not to upgrade the DASS cooling system to the one all the other operators use (built by Leonardo). Now that the producer of the other system went belly-up, they have no spares. I'm sure Luftwaffe is able to take measures to mitigate it in short order.

Not that the overall state of the German Military after years of neglect isn't anything but embarrassing, but if anyone knows anything about Wartime vs Peacetime aircraft availability (SMSgt Mac has some great blog posts about that), when push comes to shove tomorrow, you can bet Luftwaffe is able to fly considerably more aircraft than those.